CAN THIS ONE LAST WITH FOX?

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

Got a baseball club that isn't ``King of the Hill?'' Well, then, fire one manager, move another and bring in a third who has earned decidedly mixed reviews.

If you didn't know better, you'd think the Dodgers were another branch of Fox's network programming. With Rupert Murdoch's minions running things at Chavez Ravine, managers Bill Russell and Glenn Hoffman lasted only slightly longer than Fox's failing fall sitcoms ``Costello'' and ``Getting Personal.''

Nothing personal against Davey Johnson, the Dodgers' latest replacement show - er manager - but if he doesn't extend to 11 his streak of exhorting clubs to first or second-place regular-season finishes, he can count on being extended the same courtesies shown a slow-starting comedy series.

There were bolder choices out there for president Bob Graziano and general manager Kevin Malone - former Dodger Davey Lopes, ex-Yankee Chris Chambliss and Taft High product Kevin Kennedy, to name just a few.

Don Baylor, whose patience got worn as thin as the mile-high air in Colorado, also was there for the taking had the Dodgers been determined, after Felipe Alou turned them down, to stay the course in hiring their first minority manager.

And yet for the Dodgers' purposes, there might have been no better candidate than someone the Fox network tried to hire as a color commentator last year.

Johnson ultimately passed on that job and was turned away from a managerial position in Toronto because, in the words of Blue Jays general manager Gord Ash, ``Davey's track record indicates that after a couple or three seasons he's usually found in some controversy, and not necessarily ones of his own making.''

Talk about your perfect matches. What we have here is the union of a manager not prone to staying long and a club that wields a quick hook.

It didn't used to be that way, of course. The Dodgers had only two managers in their first 37 years in L.A. Everybody talks about the risks of entrusting the club to an unproven member of the Dodgers family (i.e., Lopes), forgetting that in 1977 the franchise did precisely that.

The Dodgers gave a former player, Tommy Lasorda, his first major-league managing opportunity and you could say Lasorda did all right by the people who went out on a limb for him. He shepherded the club to the National League title in his first season and the World Series championship in his fifth and 12th years.

Fox showed that kind of commitment once, sticking with the ``X-Files'' long enough for it to carve out its niche in prime time. But from the beginning, its baseball brass has shown no such patience. Within three months of assuming control of the club from Peter O'Malley, Graziano traded the Dodgers' resident superstar, Mike Piazza, and the bulk of its top prospects. Then he fired Russell and general manager Fred Claire.

The new Dodgers blueprint is as plain as it is stark: Change the complexion of the team and if that doesn't do the trick, then bring in new faces.

Johnson is no stranger to the situation that will greet him when he arrives here. In 1996 he took over an Orioles team that had lots of egos and experience and a 13-season playoff drought. He led them to consecutive postseason appearances before faxing in his resignation in Nov. of 1997 (because he believed he was about to be fired).

It was the third job Johnson had lost in eight years for reasons that have nothing to do with his record. In 24 seasons as a player and a manager, Johnson has been affiliated with only four sub-500 clubs.

No other manager currently in the majors has a better winning percentage than Johnson's .575 (985-727). He also has one of the more prickly personalities. Johnson has been described as stubborn, mercurial, selfish and manipulative. And that's just his allies talking.

Friends or foes all agree, he's not one to kowtow to management or spoiled stars. He benched three of his better players for a 1997 playoff game against Seattle and feuded with Marge Schott in Cincinnati and Peter Angelos in Baltimore (when Malone was there as the assistant GM).

One of the players Johnson rode hard in Baltimore was Bobby Bonilla, of whom he once said, ``He's not a Gold Glover wherever I put him.''

Bonilla's glove - and his $11 million salary over the next two years - belong to the Dodgers now. It'll be interesting to see how Johnson goes about wresting Bonilla and his cohorts from their collective comfort zone. No question the clubhouse could use some shaking up, considering the Dodgers haven't won a postseason game since 1988.

One unidentified baseball executive told the Sporting News last year that Johnson ``knows how to manage a game as well as anyone, but he's not a disciplinarian. He's going to get his time in on the golf course.''

Having had a whole year to roam the links to his heart's content, Johnson seems eager to get back to baseball. The tagline on the column he wrote for USA Today during the World Series read like a position-wanted ad: ``Davey Johnson, whose most recent job was with Baltimore, hopes to return to managing soon.''

Be careful what you wish for, isn't that what they say?